In a managed information environment, a network interconnects computing entities for sharing resources within a user community. This has evolved from sharing computational time to sharing information to providing services that rely on that rely on that interconnection. The computing entities are typically PCs and/or servers, and applications running on the computing entities provide the services, often in conjunction with the other computing entities via the network. Such services may include, for example, data storage and retrieval, media presentation, accounting, registration, and other functions, typically related to the ongoing operation of a business, corporation, or institution.
In an emerging global economy, as the services offered become increasingly important to the operation of the business the network infrastructure underlying the managed information environment typically grows well beyond the original design constrains for technology infrastructure and increases in complexity. This tends to force the network infrastructure toward segmentation at technological, policy, or physical boundaries that as a collective entity make up the network infrastructure. Typically, global companies grow through acquisition and the network infrastructure becomes like any other tangible asset—slow to be altered and may represent a version of technology, policy or physical boundaries that are different than the whole. These factors result in network infrastructures that tend to be widely distributed, non-uniform, and heterogeneous, meaning that there are dissimilar network entities and communication mediums across the network infrastructure. Network management of such a large distributed network presents many challenges. In particular, network management applications are presented with a complex network topology to assimilate and represent. As network management applications attempt to normalize and accommodate the various attributes and characteristics of the network entities, it can be problematic to monitor, diagnose, and maintain such networks in a scalable and timely manner.